Diligent
Driving 300% engagement growth for 1M+ executives board leaders and executives in governance, risk, and compliance.
Collaborated with Patrick Wells (Product Manager), Steve Teti (Developer), Andrew Duchon (Data Scientist)
Background
Diligent is a governance platform used by over one million professionals to manage risk and compliance. In 2022, Diligent bought a sentiment analysis tool for business news. Despite onboarding, the engagement was single digit.
Challenge - Low engagement with acquired product
Lack of engagement could mean a lot of things. One of the first challenge was how do we find the root cause. In addition, there was a clear top-down directive: “News Analytics feels fragmented—integrate it better across our suite.”
Solutions and Impact
Interviews and analytics showed users missed the tool in their daily routine. I worked with product marketing to develop email newsletter that created product entry point, align the product experience, and tailored design towards our reader. Engagement rose by 300 percent. Users could now see news sentiment at a glance.
Addressed visual consistency across product suite
We address visual consistency by implementing design system to keep the suite consistent. In the meantime, we monitor analytics to track results and interviewed users to find out how they read news.
How are user engaging with our product? Where is the mismatch?
User interviews showed the mismatch:
Many users did not know the product existed.
Others opened the app only when they needed to read a report.
Product marketing collaboration: Get business news and sentiment in your inbox
User interviews showed readers had set news habits. I worked with marketing to build newsletter to create product entry point.
User validation: Sentiment display lacked clarity for fast readers
After we used the design system to keep the product consistent, we found a second problem. Users skim news quickly and wanted clear sentiment analytics. The display was not clear enough.
Are the current component cards working?
Usability tests showed that title-only cards did not help users. I proposed flexible card components and worked with other designers to tailor them for each product.
I added sentiment color tags and clear metadata to make cards easy to scan. I worked with the design systems team to match typography, spacing, and color. We updated the design language for sentiment and documented changes for handoff. This work fixed user pain, kept the suite consistent, and helped other teams use the new cards.
🔴 Existing card design
🟢 Card with news sentiment and subscription tag
Retrospective
Ask hard questions early. I challenged assumptions as a freelancer. This surfaced hidden constraints and sped up decisions.